


Fic: Move Eastward, Happy Earth (TW_FemFicFest)

by Peregrin_Ionad



Category: Torchwood
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-01
Updated: 2010-11-01
Packaged: 2017-10-25 20:11:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peregrin_Ionad/pseuds/Peregrin_Ionad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Tosh appreciates poetry and thinks about saving the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fic: Move Eastward, Happy Earth (TW_FemFicFest)

**Author's Note:**

> Not entirely what I set out to write (but, honestly, when do I ever actually write what I think I'm going to?) The title is taken from a Tennyson poem. Also quoted are ee cummings and Matsuo Bashô. Sequel to 'The Man Who Wished Never to Die'

It becomes a little ritual of theirs, in a way. An in-joke that only the two of them share _(two plus Jack, but he doesn’t intrude. He can be very gracious when he makes the effort. Or scared, Tosh thinks, sometimes. On darker days. Scared to make too much of a connection, because favourite toys are the first to go threadbare and break._ )  
 **All night have the roses heard,  
The flute, violin, bassoon;  
All night has the casement jessamine stirred  
To the dancers dancing in tune**.  
Sometimes she gets the line of a poetry on a post-it with her morning coffee, a danish on the side if she’s been on the nightshift, up all night, busy saving the world.( _Jack likes to steal a bite or two on his way past her desk, flakes of pastry drifting down to the floor like autumn leaves. Ianto always buys two, so she never minds._ ) Sometimes Ianto slips one into her coat pocket at the end of the day and she never notices until she’s rooting for a lost miniature screwdriver, an odd end of wire or her latest piece of alien tech to experiment on (once Jack has okayed her to take it home, of course. Or, when she has made a vague attempt to wave it in his direction under the pretense of asking for permission to take it out of the Hub.)  
 **Move eastward, happy earth, and leave,  
Yon orange sunset waning slow.  
From fringes of the faded eve,  
O, happy planet, eastward go.**  
Ianto favours Tennyson, but on occasions he chooses ee cummings **(old age sticks up Keep Off signs) &youth yanks them down)** Tosh smiles more on those days, because that is more Jack’s choice than Ianto’s.  
She wonders what they mean, some of these little verses. There is no rhyme or reason to the lines, no obvious choice. They are, she decides, the dribs and drabs of poems half forgotten, recalled in the quiet moments.  
She starts to leave him haikus, Japanese script one day, English the next, phonetic pronunciation the day after again.  
 **古池や　蛙飛込む　水の音**  
She writes all her childhood favourites first,  
( **fu-ru-i-ke ya  
ka-wa-zu to-bi-ko-mu  
mi-zu no o-to**) and she knows he appreciates them because she watches how he carefully collects the three matching haikus together and sounds out the Japanese, finger tracing the script.  
 _ **old pond  
a frog leaps in  
water’s sound**_  
Tosh likes haikus, they make sense. The rhythm is mathematical, it has logical rules to follow each time - _first five syllables/the next line filled with seven/five again to end_. She still prefers cold numbers over words, is more comfortable with the clack of computer keys than silent pen strokes, but she likes the sentiment of the words. She saves the planet on a daily basis (or Cardiff, if it’s a quiet week), but the poets create whole, brand new worlds with a flick of their wrists and that, she thinks, is something worth treasuring.


End file.
